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[The labor dispute has essentially ended on October 11, 2025.]

Alissa Cheung, Clemens Merkel, Stéphanie Bozzin and Isabelle Bozzini, i.e. Quatuor Bozzini, come together with Stephanie Chua, Joseph Ferretti, and Elaine Lau, of junctQin Keyboard Collective, for these classically influenced pieces that don’t shy away from avant-garde ideas.

Rebecca Bruton’s The Faerie Ribbon opens with 4 segments, where the unpredictable keys and atmospheric strings unfold with much beauty, curious ambience and even a haunting nature further on.

The back half belongs to Jason Doell’s to carry dust & breaks through the body, where a single 20+ minute track comes with strategic droning, plenty of cinematic qualities and somewhat of an eerie intimacy.

A highly creative outing that’s tonally aware, uniquely psychedelic and emits solos from many players that seem like one, every moment is engaging and artistic.

Canadian ensemble Quatuor Bozzini are out with thew album Owen Underhill: Songs and Quartets, and it is the classical music legacy that this production revolves around. I presume that chamber music will be the specific category of choice here, and the compositions here are creation that to my mind at least blend aspects of old traditions with more contemporary oriented details. The string section is obviously in the limelight here, with two four part instrumental compositions providing ample space and room for the instrumentalists to play around with conventional movements as well as subtly dissonant and off kilter sounds and surges, and with a recurring use of what might be described as a drone like string section combination that adds a different vibe to these constructions. We also get two compositions that revolve a bit more around vocal displays, and here the strings are bit more toned down as well as being used in more of a careful and light toned manner, and combined with the controlled, careful and at times borderline ethereal vocals this creates a more sacral or religious mood and atmosphere for these two works. An album to seek out if classical music revolving around the string sections and a more contemporary and experimental take on the chamber music tradition is a kind of material you tend to enjoy.

The music of Vancouverite Owen Underhill is original and ambivalent. This ambivalence arises from the fact that it occupies a sonic territory often straddling consonance and dissonance, between modernism and ancient music. This is evident in his two vocal works (the “Songs”) featured on this album, The Retreat, and What is our Life? The strange and ghostly beauty of their vocal lines somewhat recalls the cantus firmus of 15th and 16th-century polyphony, while the disparate accents (sometimes undulating, sometimes incisive) of the string quartet root everything in a contemporary modernity. Underhill adds a sackbut (the ancestor of the trombone) to the score, which offers a rustic color equally appropriate. The texts are by ancient poets: Henry Vaughan and Sir Walter Raleigh.

The two quartets offer a different perspective. The String Quartet No. 2, Northern Line — Angel Station, is rooted in the legacy of the Second Viennese School. We are here in an austere, scholarly setting, meticulously woven, whereas Quartet No. 5, Land and Water, brings us closer to the recent avant-garde, that of the second half of the 20th century, let’s say. There too, ashen panoramas, scattered textures, but magnificent.

The Bozzini take on these scores with care. Kudos to countertenor Daniel Cabena and sackbut player Jeremy Berkman in the two vocal works.

Quatuor Bozzini er et kendt, klassisk kammerensemble med base i Canada. Ensemblet, der pt. fejrer sit 25 års-jubilæum — blandt andet med disse indspilninger af kompositioner af Owen Underhill (f. 1954) — er kendt for sit fokus på ny partiturmusik. Ensemblet har med afsæt i det fokus spillet et utal af kurraterede koncerter (hundredevis af uropførelser) og indspillet et utal af album — konstant med sans for og fokus på kvaliteten i det nye. Når jeg hører ensemblets håndtering af Owen Underhills sange og strygekvartetter, ja, så hører jeg da også både rutinens overbevisende tyngde og åbenhedens forfriskende elasticitet. På det nye album indgår to instrumentale suiter (”Northern Line — Angel Station” og ”String Quartet no. 5”) — hver opdelt i fire satser — og to sange med tekster af henholdsvis Henry Vaughan og Sir Walter Raleigh. På sangene medvirker foruden strygerkvartetten — der består af Alissa Cheung, Clemens Merkel, Marina Thibeault og Isabelle Bozzini — kontratenoren Daniel Cabena og messingbetvingeren Jeremy Berkman. Og vel er materialet nyt og krævende, men det er også solidt funderet i en traditionsbevidst stringens, som klæder såvel kompositioner som ensemble.